Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us? – William O. Douglas

City Plan For Philadelphia, Pennsylvania1776 – Paul Ryan Is As Morally Corrupt As Mitt Romney

1776 was a big year for the City of Brotherly Love. The delegates to the Continental Congress started the Declaration of Independence. That sounds awkward since we celebrate Independence Day on July 4th, but the Declaration was not completed until August. Even then Philadelphia was an American melting pot with native Indians, English, a large German population ( very resistant to adopting English as their official language), African-Americans and some Scottish-Irish settlers. The Pennsylvania territory was the third largest concentration of settlers in America at the time. Philadelphia is estimated to have had a total population of about 30,000. Today’s population is an estimated 1.6 million.

The reputation of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as a fiscal hawk is at odds with his record of supporting nearly every single budget-busting law of the past decade. Since 2001 he has voted for at least 65 separate pieces of deficit- and debt-increasing legislation, with the total tab for all those votes a whopping $6.8 trillion in cumulative deficits.

Rep. Ryan has served as a member of the House of Representatives since 1998. That year the budget was in surplus and stayed that way for the next three years. But with the start of the George W. Bush administration came the return of the red ink. In January 2001, before any Bush administration policies had been passed, the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, was projecting budget surpluses totaling $5.6 trillion over following decade. Instead, we got cumulative deficits totaling $6.1 trillion, an $11.7 trillion difference. CBO estimates that laws passed by Congress and signed by Presidents Bush and Barack Obama are responsible for $8.5 trillion of that difference. Rep. Ryan cast his vote for about 80 percent of that $8.5 trillion.

….Rep. Ryan also voted numerous times to increase nondefense spending. Of course, the most well-known of these votes was on Medicare Part D, which added over $270 billion in unpaid-for spending. But there are many lesser-known examples. In 2002 he voted for an agriculture bill that added $80 billion to the deficit. He voted for changes to military retirement in 2003 that cost $20 billion in added spending. And he voted for increased borrowing authority for flood insurance that increased federal spending by $17 billion.

Medicare Part D was a very good and very public display of how conservatives are like corrupt kids in a candy store when they holds the spending reigns. While most Americans thought a drug benefits for seniors and the disabled was past due, conservatives managed to make it both a gift to their friends in the pharmaceutical industry and not pay for their spending. The other most obvious example for Ryan and Republicans of the Bush era was Iraq and Afghanistan. In both instances like the responsible brats they are, they left the bill to be paid by someone else down the line. They know the public gets into a throw everyone out mood every other election cycle. By that time the bills have not only increased, but just like any credit, the interests must be paid as well.

All told, Rep. Ryan voted in favor of increasing federal spending by $3.2 trillion—all without offsetting the costs. Combined with his support for $2.4 trillion in tax cuts, Ryan’s votes contributed to adding trillions of dollars to the national debt, which itself led to more spending as the interest payments on that debt grew. Put it all together, and Rep. Ryan voted for over $6.8 trillion worth of cumulative deficits over the past 11 years.

But…but…but look at the deficit now, its all Obama’s fault. No, not really. To pay off the debts left by Paul Ryan and his pals you need revenue. Government revenue in relation to GDP is, like taxes, the lowest they have been in decades. Conservatives want everyone to believe we can run a civilized nation with a necessarily large intense infrastructure without paying for it. Which is like a candidate promising free donuts, caviar and unicorns for everyone and you don’t have to pay for it, except for those cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, medical research, preparing for climate change and so on and on. As everyone knows at this point, quite a few adult age Americans believe, deeply and angrily, that they can have it all without paying for it. Thus they buy the new improved Republican snake oil the next election cycle, forgetting how it did not work the last go round.

After seeking millions of dollars from a stimulus spending program he had publicly opposed as wasteful, GOP vice presidential candidate and congressman Paul Ryan repeatedly denied making the requests, first on a Boston radio station in 2010 and again Wednesday in a television interview.

Audio from 2010 provided Thursday by WBZ indicates that Ryan, responding to a caller, said that he would not vote against something and “then write to the government to ask them to send us money.” He added: “I did not request any stimulus money.”

He repeated that response this week in an interview with Cincinnati’s WCPO-TV. “No, I never asked for stimulus,” he said, adding, “I don’t recall.”

But Thursday evening, Ryan acknowledged having sent the letters above his signature. “After having these letters called to my attention I checked into them, and they were treated as constituent service requests in the same way matters involving Social Security or Veterans Affairs are handled. This is why I didn’t recall the letters earlier. But they should have been handled differently, and I take responsibility for that.”

…“Those are different than getting assistance for a company in the district and getting $20 million,” he said.

But Ellis said a bigger question is why Ryan signed the letters if he didn’t know what they were requesting and why.

“One would hope that lawmakers are engaged when they are asking the federal government for money,” he said. “Due diligence is required on something they are affixing their signature to.”

Use your imagination to speculate how low, how corrupt, how immoral, how seedy, how tawdry conservatives can be, and they will always sink lower than your imagination. Anti-Obama Navy SEAL leader: I’m a Birther

President Barack Obama is a socialist, was raised by communists, and wasn’t born in the United States, according to the former Navy SEAL who founded the group Special Operations Speaks (SOS), which aims to portray Obama as anti-military in this election season.

…”I have to admit that I’m a Birther,” said SOS founder Larry Bailey, a retired 27-year veteran of the Navy SEALs, in an interview. “If there were a jury of 12 good men and women and the evidence were placed before them, there would be absolutely no question Barack Obama was not born where he said he was and is not who he says he is.”

I thought Vice President Biden’s recent comments about conservatives trying to put American workers in chains was a fair description of conservative economic policies that are destroying much of the middle-class and creating a plutocratic cabal of wage slave masters at the top. Apparently the right’s allergy to anything resembling honest descriptions of their agenda had their feelings hurt, so they went ballistic over a false report of the smiley-faced fascists at The Daily Caller and The Drudge Report, Conservative Republican Media Falsely Claim Obama Donor Received Taxpayer Loan

Fox & Friends, the Daily Caller, and the Drudge Report are falsely charging that a businessman that has supported President Obama and Vice President Biden is receiving a taxpayer-financed loan to expand his business overseas. In fact, the loan comes from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, which does not use taxpayer funds, and exists for the purpose of helping “U.S. businesses gain footholds in emerging markets” overseas.

The Daily Caller charged:

In late July, John Hynansky — a longtime friend of Vice President Joe Biden, and a major donor to Biden’s campaigns as well as President Barack Obama’s — was awarded a $20 million taxpayer loan to build a foreign-car dealership in Ukraine.

Drudge highlighted this false claim with the headline, “Biden’s ‘good friend’ receives $20M federal loan to open luxury car dealership — in Ukraine.” And Fox News also hyped this claim with co-host Gretchen Carlson saying: “Talk about friends in high places. A major donor to President Obama’s campaign getting $20 million in taxpayer money to build a luxury car dealership in the Ukraine.”

However, the claim that this loan uses taxpayer money is false.The Overseas Private Investment Corporation states that it is “the U.S. Government’s development finance institution” and “helps U.S. businesses gain footholds in emerging markets.” While it receives administrative funding from Congress, OPIC “operates on a self-sustaining basis at no net cost to American taxpayers” and has actually reduced the federal budget deficit for 34 consecutive years:

Are OPIC services U.S. taxpayer-funded?

OPIC operates on a self-sustaining basis at no net cost to American taxpayers. In fact, it generated net income of $269 million in Fiscal Year 2011, helping to reduce the federal budget deficit for the 34th consecutive year.

Indeed, during the early 1980s, OPIC returned the taxpayer money used to start up the agency to President Reagan. At the time, Reagan praised OPIC for helping advance the cause of economic freedom in the world.

The Daily Caller, Fox, and Drudge also highlight Hynansky’s political contributions and relationship to Biden, but at no point do they present evidence that these donations or his friendship with Biden had any effect on his loan application.